The plan is to create better AI opponents and trainers, and take on human champions.

Shares

At BlizzCon on Friday, Google research scientist Oriol Vinyals announced that StarCraft 2 was being opened up to artificial intelligence researchers around the world. The goal: to create better AI opponents for StarCraft 2, and possibly even create AI coaches that could teach humans how to better play the strategy game.

Of course, the goal of AI development is not just to match human players but best them, and just as DeepMind's AI program AlphaGo beat human champion Go player Lee Se-dol earlier this year, DeepMind wants its AI to someday take on a human StarCraft 2 champion.

There will be more details about DeepMind's interest in StarCraft 2 revealed later during the convention, and we'll update you if we hear anything else. (Unless, of course, the AI has already taken over by then.)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The first PC game Chris owned was Choplifter in 1982, and since then our staff writer has played at least three other games. He has a love/hate relationship with Early Access survival games and an odd fascination with the lives of NPCs.